In many ways, Aida is bound up with contemporary history, however. But, this distinction between history and poetry – and Aristotle’s assertion of the greater ‘philosophic and graver import’ of the latter, ‘since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars’ – stayed in my mind during the opera performance later that evening, since it seemed to me that one might argue that Carsen had sought to position Aida as poetry – representing Aristotle’s universals, ‘what such or such a kind of man will probably or necessarily say or do’ – rather than as ‘history’. Griffiths’ ensuing intellectual and critical probing is characteristically wide-ranging in its allusiveness and broad in its conceptualisation. Drawing on Aristotle’s Poetics, he suggests, ‘History tells us what in fact happened, poetry lays out the pattern according to which we could have seen the events coming’.
‘A rehearsal of Hamlet’ begins with reflections on the various small changes to the title of Shakespeare’s play – ‘Revenge’, ‘Tragedie’ and ‘True Chronicle Historie’ appeared in turn in early printings – leading Griffiths to reflect on the play’s genre and more generally on the critical opinion in Shakespeare’s time about the boundary between history and poetry. Finding myself with an hour to kill before a performance of Robert Carsen’s new production of Aida at the Royal Opera House earlier this week, I settled down in a small bar in Covent Garden with a glass of wine and a copy of If Not Critical – an edition of ten lectures by Eric Griffiths which were originally delivered at the Faculty of English at Cambridge University.
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